[xdebug-general] Compression

Hello.
Mike and I started a debate some time ago about a problem he had. He has
to debug PHP on a server that is "far away". The problem is, that the
amount of data that needs to be transfered takes quite some time and
that is understandably demoralizing. He is using my Notepad++ plugin,
that is (depending on the configuration) fetching the whole local and
global context on each step.
Before somebody flames, I know that I can set the max_depth to a low
value and then fetch the sub trees when needed. As this would be an
ideal solution, it was technically too complicated at that moment.
We therefore resorted to a different solution, compression.
I extended the dbgp proxy so it can parse the feature_get and
feature_set commands and react to them. I added a simple feature
"compression".
Anyway I used zlib compression that was the easiest to implement in
Delphi (even easier in PHP). So after enabling compression with
feature_set and receiving positive confirmation all data that is sent
from Xdebug to client (XML data) is compressed. When the proxy receives
a packet (size,null,data,null) it takes the packet body, compresses it
and again adds the head (compressed_size,null,compressed_data,null).

Does anybody else think this could be useful? Would one like to
implement this in the php extension? Or rather have a proxy solution
bundled with Xdebug. I'd also like to debate on the possible other
features (compression_suported, enabled, how to select what compression
use...)

Best regards,
-Zobo
Received on Fri Nov 16 2007 - 16:40:23 GMT